Shane-Austin

There is a reason I may not show anything I've done with Adobe products .I'm so over Adobe's attitude. When I watch 300, I'm like that big golden guy acts like Adobe! I've used Adobe suites since 5.0 and on up to current. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to leave Adobe. The programs are awesome, the flaw is the company itself.

I'm a long time diehard loyal Adobe user and transitioning out from that took a lot of Adobe-abuse. Who remembers getting to leave QuarkXpress for InDesign? What an amazing program ID is. Nothing quite like it. I did miss ImageReady though. That was a very useful program. But with every change comes give and take. You have to look at the balance. Does the give outweigh the take? Not anymore. Adobe takes more than it gives.

A program was running around the background of my computer, using my resources and I was tired of it. Followed it to Adobe Acrobat jumping from folder to folder (I forget the app I used to find it). This didn't sit well with me. I uninstalled Acrobat and have had no problems since. I use Foxit PDF now. When did Acrobat become so nosy?

Get what you pay for? Let's look at that. Paying Adobe monthly for CC gets you updates like Russian roulette. Sometimes you get some awful changes. I've lost actions and libraries and other prefs that had to be changed after an update. I've had functions quit or default values change on things I've never had to adjust before. 10 to 20 min figuring out what needs to be reset on a deadline is far from productive. The updates treated all my coworkers differently. No consistency. Plus every update adds like 3 gig to the already bloated software using 90% of your resources. For what? A new button that does very little to your productivity. They are literally trying to invent ways to be needed. Think about it. They are getting paid more than ever to give you less than ever.

Once a month or so I.T. would have to get on conference with Adobe because the cloud wasn't connecting. We'd have everything working then something would change on Adobe's end and we'd have to align our settings best as I understood it. Sometimes the cloud app had to be reinstalled or sometimes it was a much longer issue. During this time Adobe treats you like a license thief and your cut off. Hopefully you have a 30 day trial untouched. Spending a fortune over several months for a program you can't own? Come on just kill the updates not my software! So yeah I timed out of my trial on almost each Suite program over the years. If you update CS6 the cloud owns that too. CS-friggin-6 a paid in full program taken by Adobe because of an update?! I had to go back to CS4 just to keep my projects moving forward. After the cloud started working again I.T. asked us if we wanted to do a fresh install of CS6 and ditch the contract. I said oh yeah! Even the patch for CS6 to read newer ID files requires signing up with cloud. Cash grabbing a-holes. During those times I became well versed in Gimp, Inkscape, Krita and more. Funny that those programs always come through. They honestly did.

I soon realized open source could take everything I throw at it, there are many occasions where Gimp would open a JPG or TIFF and so on that PhotoShop would not. For whatever reason we'd have to request new images from vendors several times a year for normal everyday file types that wouldn't open but Gimp would open them every time. I got kind of cocky after awhile whenever I was asked to open and re-save art just because I knew Gimp would work. Not to mention how all my files worked with Adobe. Had to. We shared work files every week.

Besides Adobe not giving a damn about customers anymore my productivity increased without CC. It honestly did. CC is an anchor. Once I saw that, I stopped using it primarily. Paid up for the year so over the last few months I have saved all my templates backward so I can open ID files in CS5. I probably won't renew my CC for next year. I feel free from Adobe now and they can't tweak my tools or take away my toolbox anymore and the tools I have now do some things better than Adobe. Inkscape traces images like Illustrator only wishes it could. It's one of my biggest wow moments I get from people used to AI.

In conclusion. I'm not saying Adobe is weak or the people that depend on it are slaves to Adobe. I'm saying the more options you have. The bigger your toolbox is. The better off everyone is. Yourself, clients, the company etc... Universities in France are switching to Krita due to the lack of Adobe's support or give-a-damn. As my coworker put it, "Adobe hurts Adobe". It's been a rough break-up.